On Social Cohesion

On a posting in which I criticised what I see as excessive individualism in society, someone mentioned the term ‘social cohesion’. In my view, social cohesion becomes a reality when people identify with each other, a process that occurs more readily in small groups than large. Social cohesion therefore, implies a degree of exclusiveness. We can identify strongly with family, club or local community. We have parochial preferences because we know where we stand in relation to other members. Identity within larger, more nebulous entities is less easily found and we can feel lost until new parameters have been established.

In recent decades however, parochialism has come under attack and we have been urged to embrace indiscriminately. The Left insisted that all cultures are equally valid and exclusiveness became a dirty word. Inclusiveness came in with the force of law behind it. Joe Bloggs was told to open himself to the world, which would bring colour into his life whether Joe wanted it or not. He became a ‘citizen of the world’, a member of the ‘international community’, when all he wanted was to mix with blokes like himself, and if he insisted on staying in his parish, then the world would come to him, whether he liked it or not.

Discrimination became a dirty word, not simply in employment law, but in social activity as well. Once set in motion, the pernicious erosion of Joe’s boundaries, his exclusive community, gathered pace. The walls were torn down and the values that people shared behind them were uprooted. He found himself adrift in an ocean of inclusiveness, the rudder of his norms and beliefs denied him. Lost, he came to rely on the only person he could trust, himself. Individualism became his rudder. Ironically, those he was urged to embrace are not adrift or without boundaries. We hear often the word ‘community’ applied to specific groups who continue to practice exclusivity. We have the ‘black community’, as if all blacks shared a mutual identity, the ‘gay community’ and the ‘Muslim community’. Only Joe is denied parochial norms, the white lines in the road that allow one to drive where they please, but not how they please.